Are You Getting In Your Own Way Without Realizing?

I truly believe that the extent of your success is your good habits minus your bad ones — if we had to put it simply. The typical bad habits you might think of are habits like unhealthy eating, excessive drinking and smoking, etc. But the truth is that we’ve all got hundreds of different habits we are not even consciously aware of. The problem with this is that they affect every aspect of our lives! Are you getting in your own way without realizing?

Of course, it isn’t difficult to see how some of our habits affect our personal lives, but the fact that they actually play a huge role in your professional success isn’t initially as obvious. With entrepreneurship comes independence, and with that comes a lot of responsibility — without a boss to set the rules, deadlines, and consequences, you’re left more vulnerable than ever to letting your bad habits take over!

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If you’re running your own business, or making preparations to, then trying to change your bad habits can seem like something that isn’t urgent and that can be dealt with later. Leaving your bad habits on the back-burner can have a huge impact on how successfully you get your work done and how effectively you manage your company. It’s because of this that getting a more in-depth understanding of your obstacles and how to deal with them is of the utmost importance.

Where do you start? Drop the traditional and somewhat boring exercises you can find online and start by distinguishing between goal-directed responses and context-cue responses. This distinction is crucial to your achievements as an entrepreneur.

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The Intentional Mind Versus The Habitual Mind

In a study published in the Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin (2011) Neal, Wood, Wu, and Kurlander examined the battle between the intentional and habitual minds that exists in every one of us. At the beginning of the study, the participants were able to clearly distinguish between stale and fresh popcorn. Yet, when they were presented with popcorn in a movie theatre, those who habitually ate popcorn at the movies ate the popcorn whether it was fresh or not. In other words, the urge to comply with habit was stronger than the adverse reaction that the participants might have had from the stale popcorn.

What’s the “stale popcorn” in your life?

Can you think of any situations in which your habitual mind won over your intentional mind? If you’ve ever opted to browse through Facebook instead of getting all your work-related calls done or chosen to stay up late watching a movie instead of getting some sleep for an important meeting the next day, then you have.

If you set yourself some goals or have intentions and then you don’t rise to the challenge and instead give into your old habits, you are playing a win-lose game with yourself. Don’t say you want to be successful and then run away from the things that will make you more successful.

However, if you are setting intentions to change habits, you take action, and you still find it difficult to follow through, there may be conflicting goals which you are unaware of. It is because of these conflicting goals that action becomes difficult, so start by digging deeper into yourself to discover what’s really going on. We get in our own way without realizing when we do things in conflict with where we want to go in life. In business, you can risk doing this.

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Ask yourself these questions:

How many intentions have you set and then not followed through on? Really, take a minute and reflect on it — from procrastinating to empty promises, everything. Get an average number per week of how often you do this.

How do you feel about yourself? Not so good I guess, so why keep doing it?

What would it take for you to throw away the “stale popcorn” in your life and tackle your less obvious but damaging habits?

Here is the truth

The more you listen to your weaker voice (habitual voice), the louder it will get and vice versa. So make the voice of intention louder and rise to the challenges you know will lead you to more success.

If you can’t even control your own habits, what makes you think you can run your own business?

It would seem really silly to undermine your success by ignoring the habits that might be sabotaging it. Warren Buffett has said that “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” The earlier you get ahead of the potential problems that your habits can have for your business, the easier it will be for you to create a sustainable and much more pleasant road to success!

10 Ways to Build Positive Work Relationships and Work as a Team

Behind the corporate veil, the actual members who work towards achieving the company goals are the ultimate assets.

It is very important for every team member to maintain focused goals on a professional front, at their individual level and at the organizational level. With even the slightest discord between two employees, the entire team might suffer and have to adjust with the downsize in organizational success that they realize ultimately.

As humans, each and every employee is bound to have different opinion and feel inclined to meet their personal goals, just as much as they meet the goals of their company. Hence, it is essential that work relationships among different employees are friendly and cordial. This will help the fellow team members to work together as an efficient team. The ultimate outcome of which will be a capable work force, poised to gather the gains of organizational success.

Let us take a look at some of the ways to build positive work relationships and help employees work together as a team:

1. Respect Your Peer’s Time

No matter which specific domain you work in or in which your organization deals in, each arena entails performance of various jobs by the employees. Within this organization, there are a set of cumulative jobs which ought to be performed at a specific pace, and within a set period of time.

Sometimes, there might also be a sequence to the performance of actions and processes, so that the next process in the sequence can be performed. Some procedures are dependent upon the performance of an action by a certain member of the team, so that the other members can carry out the subsequent steps in the sequence. The ultimate target with this planning is that the work must be completed on time and there should be no delay in meeting the deadlines which have been set for the purpose.

Thus, in situations where you are placed in a role where other people are affected by your actions or performance, it is essential that you respect their time and effort, and ensure that the ball is not pent up in your court.

At the same time, remember that you should make yourself available for other people, should they require your help. Ultimately, your aim must be focused at ensuring that work is not pending and you get it done like experts doing the work.

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2. Ensure that You Are Cautious With Social Media

With the ongoing trend in the digital space, it is easy to feel compelled and drawn towards the idea of connecting with your peers and colleagues on the social media. Although there is not much harm in the practice, it is essential to observe caution while making these connections.

The simple reason behind this is that one wrong move can dampen your reputation or else, cause your peers to gather an incorrect impression about you.

It makes sense to ensure what the social media policy of your organization is before treading on this path. If such policies restrict the association of fellow employees, then you must respect them.

3. Communication is the Key

Communication is essentially one of the most vital keys which impact how your relationships with peers and other employees are. The role of effective communication cannot be stressed enough. It is vital in attaining the goals of working together in an organization and carrying out the jobs which will help in attaining success.

However, there is a very big danger with communication. As part of the human nature, it is easy to assume that the person ahead of us has understood what we intend to say. This might not be true at all times.

Therefore, taking feedback is important. This will help you understand if your message has been understood in the intended manner. If the message has not reached the intended party as expected, corrective actions can be taken at the same time.

Poor communication has the disadvantage of adding stress and distrust among fellow employees. It can sometimes causes crucial message failed to be delivered, leading to organizational turbulence, after which the blame game is hard to end.

In order to avoid the confusion and misunderstanding, communicate through a formal chain of command and follow formal mode of communication. Thus, communicating through mails or any other formal channel of communication would be the appropriate way to communicate in order to keep everything on record. This will help in referring to the communications later, should any dispute arise.

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4. Feedback is Important

As important as it is to take feedback from other people, it is also important to give your feedback. It is not just you who needs feedback but also your peers, in order to understand how well they are performing.

Your feedback will help other people progress in their work as much as it will help you progress in yours. Giving constructive feedback to your fellow peers at the right time and in the right state will help them advance, and ultimately lead to the success of the organization.

Your co-workers are bound to value your opinion and regard you in a positive light, if you provide them with the feedback that you require from them.

5. Make Use of Common Day Courtesies

Greeting a co-worker may sound like something so ordinary that you might wonder how it ended up on this list. However, as long as we are talking about ways to build a positive work environment, this one cannot be ignored.

You maybe surprised by bidding your co-workers simple common day courtesies! Being humble never hurt anyone, even if you do not exactly receive something in return.

Moreover, you must maintain eye contact with your fellow peers if you wish to gain their trust. This will provide the necessary infrastructure to build a capable team.

6. Get Into the Habit of Helping Yourself

While at work, accept that you are never going to receive the pampered behaviour which you do at home. No one at your workplace wakes up in the morning and makes themselves available at the to hear you rant or constantly answer your questions. However, you might come up with situations nevertheless, which require you to ask for help or advice.

In this scenario, try to gather some information about your question, say, from the manuals which you receive upon joining, or from the web and equip yourself with some concrete information about the question which you may be ready to ask from someone else.

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At least when you approach someone with your doubts, along with the information gathered you’ve gathered, they will appreciate you for having made the effort to find out the answer.

This will make them feel important as well, answering your questions and helping you achieve your goals or tasks.

7. Treat Everyone as Equals

As a member of your team, it is not your job to point out who is better and who is not. Organizational politics can be a deadly game to play and as long as you are not a pro player, it is always risky to put yourself in a situation that will tarnish your image.

Gossiping is a strict no and spreading rumours is something you must avoid at all costs. Behave in a humble manner and even if someone tries to pull you into a conversation, avoid it in a respectful manner. Do everything you can to pull yourself out of that situation.

While talking behind people’s backs may sound like a refreshing fun activity initially, it will definitely come to bite you behind the back in the future.

Also, it will be wise to remember that no one in the organization is permanent. People change and so can their designation. It will be better for you to keep your personal views about someone in your head.

As long as you maintain the idea of treating everyone as equal, you will find yourself amidst a positive working environment at all times.

8. Acknowledge Your Mistakes

Mistakes happen and one of the more noteworthy facts about mistakes is that they can be made by anyone. The wisest thing you can do is to admit mistakes you’ve made.

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Playing the blame game will not only tarnish the name of your peers but also your own. It is always good to avoid getting into a tiff with others. Admit your mistakes and think of remedies or solutions to fix it. For a positive working relationship with your peers, you will need to adopt this quality.

9. Learn to Take on Responsibilities

Passing on your work load might be required when you are overburdened with work. However, when entrusted with a job, you should try to accept it as your responsibility and avoid putting it off to someone else.

Putting off work all the time will only end up creating a block between you and your peers, while they may start avoiding communicating with you at all. When you work in a team, your duty is to cooperate and build a positive working relationship with your teammates.

10. Engage in a Follow-up Routine

As a part of a team, it is necessary to express the fact that you care about your team members and you are also poised to achieve the targets set by your team.

Whenever you get the chance, do not hold back from asking your co-workers about your work performance and whether they think there’s anything you should improve.

Be prepared to be available to change and improve. This will go a long way in presenting yourself as a responsible and willing to learn employee.

The Bottom Line

These are just some of the ways in which fellow team members can build positive work relationships among themselves and work towards taking the organization to new heights. This attitude is best to achieve overall success for the organization and create an environment of trust and honesty among the employees.